Monday, March 24, 2008

Guy Herbert -

...The security theatre in fact heightens the perception of threat - and the politicians, being for the most part innumerate, unscientific, weathervanes of public emotion, are the most susceptible to it. They don't invent the threat to justify totalitarianism, but will embrace totalitarianism joyfully as a concomitant of their own inability to judge the magnitude, and their unwillingness to take responsibility for the consequences of taking any position at all. What we have is a malign feedback caused by political desire to be seen doing something pumping up the media. That's why every fantasist is presented as a real danger, every near-random act of successful violence be a civilization-threatening strategic blow. Which only encourages would-be terrorists in their sense of their own importance. It is a folie á deaux between two groups of showoffs.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

John Adams -
